Pledge of Allegiance

[8awheel]

What is the name of your state? Illinois

First of all, I don't care about your personal opinions. Frazier V Alexandre (2006), the Florida Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to require students to stand for the pledge of allegiance. The ACLU took the case and you can find all of the documents on there site, all I am wondering is-- does this apply to only Florida students, or students living anywhere in the 50 states? If a federal judge in a certain state makes a ruling, does that become federal law?

 

[Zigner]

What is the name of your state? Illinois

First of all, I don't care about your personal opinions. Frazier V Alexandre (2006), the Florida Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to require students to stand for the pledge of allegiance. The ACLU took the case and you can find all of the documents on there site, all I am wondering is-- does this apply to only Florida students, or students living anywhere in the 50 states? If a federal judge in a certain state makes a ruling, does that become federal law?

I don't care for your attitude - don't come on here dictating how the VOLUNTEERS on this site answer your question.

 

[las365]

First of all, I don't care about your personal opinions.

What a lovely introduction to your post. So warm, so respectful and appreciative and inviting, why, it inspires me to dig deep and go the extra mile to give you the answer you seek.

Not really. But thanks for asking.

 

[8awheel]

I don't care for your attitude - don't come on here dictating how the VOLUNTEERS on this site answer your question.

Sorry, that isn't what I meant. I meant that I don't care about what you think of the pledge of allegiance. I didn't want this discussion to get into religion or politics. It was strictly a question about law, which I why i asked at these forums rather than somewhere non-serious, and I wanted to make it clear that I don't care about what your personal beliefs are-- that is not what this thread is about. Whether you support it or not is another matter, I am just curious about the legality of the matter. No disrespect was intended.

What a lovely introduction to your post. So warm, so respectful and appreciative and inviting, why, it inspires me to dig deep and go the extra mile to give you the answer you seek.

I apologize, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. I am being misunderstood here. I didn't mean that you can't give me your personal opinion about the law, just not your personal opinion on what the law should be. Maybe it was a bit crude, I just didn't want people to rant about themselves and their own beliefs rather than discuss the court case and the law.

 

[Ozark_Sophist]

If you search the internet, you will find other similar cases. But it seems you are asking if a state supreme court trumps or sets precedence for court rulings of other states and the answer to that is no.

 

[8awheel]

Thanks for the quick reply.

if a state supreme court trumps or sets precedence for court rulings of other states and the answer to that is no.

So, whatever ruling a Florida judge makes (even if he sits on the Supreme Court), it will have no affect on Illinois law (or any state for that matter) and only applies to Florida. Am I understanding you correctly?

In any case, it seems Illinois does indeed have a similar law which says that the recitation of the pledge is required, but that participation is not. This was Senate Bill 1634, in case you're wondering. But now the queston is, can individual counties and cities (or even public schools) have rules that are even more stringent than the state's? For example, can Springfield have a law requiring the participation in the pledge of allegiance even though the state does not require participation. I am not saying that they do or do not, only asking if that is how it works.

 

[notsmartmark]

Here's a good read: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Speech/studentexpression/topic.aspx?topic=pledge

 

[quincy]

If a U.S. District Court judge in Florida makes a decision in a case, it is binding on only the parties involved in the case. If this decision is appealed from the U.S. District Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals for that circuit, however, then the decision made is binding on all people in that circuit. Florida's Court of Appeals is in the 11th District, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

Generally, the judge makes a decision and it affects the parties in the case. The parties can appeal. The Court of Appeals hears the case and when a decision is made, then that is case law, and it becomes binding on all in the state. If this, too, is appealed, to Florida's Supreme Court, then that decision becomes law and is binding. If the case involves a federal issue, or a constitutional issue (like prayer in school), it may be appealed even further to the U.S. Supreme Court, and if the Court decides to hear the case, their decision becomes binding on the whole country.

I think I wrote this right.

Oh, also, when there is a conflict between federal and state laws, and state and local laws, federal law will preempt state, and state will preempt local.

 

[justalayman]

the Florida Supreme Court ruled

do you really need more than that?

actually though, the decision was made in a US district court BUT it only struck down a Florida law as unconstitutional so in reality, it would only apply to Florida. Any other state that had similar laws would need to challenge them but obviously they too would be found to be unconstitutional.

 

[8awheel]

I think I wrote this right.

It makes sense to me.

do you really need more than that?

actually though, the decision was made in a US district court BUT it only struck down a Florida law as unconstitutional so in reality, it would only apply to Florida. Any other state that had similar laws would need to challenge them but obviously they too would be found to be unconstitutional.

The last part of what you said is why I kept emphasizing the Florida SC. It just seemed to me that if something was found to be unconstitutional in one state, then automatically it would be unconstitutional in every other state that did the same thing. Otherwise what good would the constitution be if only a couple states had to follow it. But, that was just my thinking.

 

[justalayman]

My point is that it was not a Florida SC decision. It was a US district court decision. I am not a trained legal eagle but I believe the state has no standing to rule on a Federal constitutional matter. I believe it MUST be decided in a federal court. Even with this though, the law was a specific Florida law. Although it was regarding a specific action (forced standing) it would not apply to any other states law since it was the law and not the action that was struck down.

Because of this, any state that has laws requiring standing as this one did, they could take the proper process to alter their laws so they did abide by the constitutional standards or repeal their law. I do not believe their is any automatic action to repeal all laws that may be similar. Each law is written with very specific verbiage and due to those possible variances, I believe each law would need to be addressed individually.

Re-read quincy's post. If you notice, there is an escalating level of federal courts and each of those courts decisions play a different role.

For a courts decision to apply to the entire US, it would need to be addressed by the SCOTUS. Up until that point, it is limited to a district of the US courts. There are often different decisions among the various districts that cause different actions within each of those districts. When something gets taken to the SCOTUS, THAT is the final and all encompassing decision.

As I stated, I do not believe the Florida courts have jurisdiction to rule on federal constitutional matters. Regardless of this though, any decision the state would make would only apply to Florida. Now other states with similar laws could use that decision to support their cases but it does not make it a fact before the local courts decisions.

here is a link to an article that sites several similar, yet not identical lawsuits that were prior to Frazier v. Alexandre. As you should see, they each attack the same basic action yet each law had different requirements that caused the law to be challenged. If you read Frazier v. Alexander, you should see that actually the standing was not the greatest issue here but the fact that it required parental permission to opt out of the requirement and at what point did the student himself rather than his parents have standing to object to the law.

As with most SCOTUS cases, there are myriad but very specific parts of a law that are challenged and it is often not what one believes the case to be about.

Perfect exp ample; Roe v. Wade; what was it about?

 

[Ozark_Sophist]

Perfect exp ample; Roe v. Wade; what was it about?

Wasn't that a decision between roeing a boat across a river or wading?

 

[8awheel]

Ok, I'll forget about Frazier V Alexandre then. I guess the question has changed again. In Illinois, as I said before, the state only requires the recitation in schools, not any participation of students ("In Illinois, our statute does not - and should not - require students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance against their will. The current law simply calls upon pupils in certain elementary educational institutions to recite the Pledge of Allegiance on school days. This provision does not mandate that "all" pupils comply and does not prescribe a penalty for noncompliance..... In conclusion, I believe that is is important for those pupils willing to participate to say the Pledge of Allegiance everyday... "-- http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/legisnet92/sbgroups/sb/920SB1634gms.html )

So do Illinois public school's (primary and secondary) have the lawful authority to require participation? It comes down to how local laws interact with state law, something I know nothing about, obviously.

 

[justalayman]

Wasn't that a decision between roeing a boat across a river or wading?

that is about as close to the actual reason behind the case as abortion was.(at least the SCOTUS decision)

While the initial action did deal with abortion, the SCOTUS decision was a much wider reaching decision because it ruled on privacy, which the SCOTUS stated, the right to an abortion, would be included within. So, the SCOTUS did not actually rule on the abortion itself but the 14th amendment that allowed the right of privacy to include the control over oneself to the extent that an abortion would be included.

The opinion of the Roe Court, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, declined to adopt the district court's Ninth Amendment rationale, and instead asserted that the "right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy

I, personally, still do not understand how such a decision would allow an action that may or may not have been considered illegal.

That decision, although it has not been used to contest the prohibition of suicide (where so prohibited), would be just as applicable to suicide, actually more so, in my opinion.

Would not ones rights of privacy (with that privacy to include the right of control over oneself as written by the SCOTUS via Roe v. Wade) allow one to commit suicide?

I believe the SCOTUS failed us in the Roe v. Wade decision by sidestepping the true issue in contest and placing their decision under the guise of privacy.

Not that I believe I should ever control another person, I believe (I'm Catholic btw) that a woman having an abortion is expressing that same control over another (the zygote, embryo, fetus, baby, child) as the courts refused to allow via Roe v. Wade.

Just to (hopefully) avoid a huge argument about abortion, I, and no other human, can positively state when an entity becomes a living entity. I believe viability should never be the deciding factor. Truth be told, viability is still not the deciding factor in allowing abortions. If you are aware of "partial birth abortions", you would have to agree but even if we made the decision based on viability, then that same argument could be used to allow the murder of children and the mentally or physically impaired since neither would survive without input from others to maintain their life.

As medical technology advances, we have seen the gestational requirement for viability (as defined to mean, has a fair probability of survival) to continue to be reduced. There are actual experiments that are attempting to grow a child ex-situ. That would allow the limits of viability of a <child> to be reduced to 0 weeks. If viability is considered as a determining factor, at that time, abortion, in totality, would be wrong, by nay standards.

 

[justalayman]

So do Illinois public school's (primary and secondary) have the lawful authority to require participation? ,.

Ultimately, no, but it could take a federal court level suit to clarify and enforce such belief and action.